The Importance of Excel in Business

Released in 1985, Excel is perhaps the single most important
software program ever. It is widely popular and used for a ton of different
reasons by both individuals and Business Outline alike.

Whether you are organizing
your family budget, your business’s budget, creating a contact list of clients
or potential leads, preparing data for marketing, Excel is the “swiss army
knife” software that many people have turned to in order to get “stuff” done.

Below are a few overviews of how Excel is used for business
purposes.

The Importance of Excel in Business

Finance and
Accounting

Almost all finance and accounting departments at business
both big and small use Excel or some form of spreadsheet software. Computer
screens are open with Excel spreadsheets filled with customer data, budgets,
monthly and quarterly financial results, P&L statements and budget
forecasts. These are all very important for making business decisions and Excel
has grown to play a crucial role in this.

One could argue that these departments are where Excel gets
its most use. There are a ton of features and functions of Excel that can turn
painstaking manual efforts that use to take days or weeks into very easy tasks
that take a few hours or minutes. That is how you can really reduce costs and
increase the productivity of your work force.

Marketing

There is a close relationship between the marketing and
finance folks at any business. The marketing teams depend on the finance team
to provide them with valuable sales and client data. This data helps the
marketing team make decisions on what marketing efforts are working or not and
provides them with information on how to make better use of the company’s
marketing dollars.

When it comes to customer and lead generation side of
marketing, spreadsheets can play a crucial role in helping to organize
marketing efforts. For example, using pivot tables, marketing team members can
quickly summarize sales data by various categories and isolate potential
clients into certain “buckets” so they can better target them.

Human Resources

Human resources plays an important role in any business. HR
employees are the ones who tend to help make decisions about employees. One way
they do this is by figuring out just how much employees may be costing the
company and keeping basic data/records on employees. Excel can play a role in
organizing this data that can be used by various departments in the company. You
Can Do Anything with a Spreadsheet

Here’s a few examples of how Excel can be used for Business Outline

Create revenue models for an existing product line for an
ecommerce company.

Create a list of employees and their basic information,
company information like hire dates, vacation time, sick time and general
notes.

Create a calendar of events for company events.

Create a calendar to outline an action plan for the
activities you are going to perform for a new product launch.

Create a simple budget forecast for how much you are going
to spend on a new advertising campaign.

These are just a few examples of what you can do. If you
think your employees could benefit from using Excel and take better advantage
of what it can do, then start looking online for resources.

You can go the DIY
way and just scour the Internet for videos and tutorials or you could even hire
an Excel spreadsheet consultant that can teach your business team.
Either route you take can only help if the main goal is learn how your Business Outline can take full advantage of Excel.